Mercury-based electrical switches have been used historically in a wide variety of settings, including electronics, automotive, aerospace, military and industrial applications. Generally described, such switches utilize a pool of mercury contained in a sealed housing to selectively establish or facilitate the establishment of a conductive path between electrodes. In one illustrative example, referred to as a “tilt switch”, the mercury pool is caused to occupy different spaces within the interior volume of the housing depending on the gravitational orientation of the housing. When the housing is placed in one orientation (e.g., upright), the mercury pool contacts two or more electrodes to allow the flow of current there between; when the housing is placed in a different orientation, the mercury pool is no longer in contact with both electrodes, and thus the circuit is opened. Mercury possesses several properties that make it an ideal material for switches of this type, including melting and boiling points that allow it to remain in the liquid phase over a wide range of operating temperatures, low resistivity, and low wettability with respect to glass and other commonly employed housing materials.
Growing concerns about mercury's toxicity and the effect of its release to the environment have prompted adoption of governmental regulations that favor or require the phase-out of mercury switches in commercial products. To date, however, no wholly satisfactory replacement devices have been developed. One approach that has been extensively investigated involves substituting a gallium based alloy (e.g., a gallium-indium-tin eutectic) for mercury in an encapsulated switch. Such gallium alloys are liquid over a typical range of switch operating temperatures and exhibit low resistivity. A major obstacle to the substitution of mercury with gallium alloy is that gallium alloys, unlike mercury, tend to wet glass and other housing materials. This wetting of housing surfaces may create persistent electrical pathways that are not opened (or are opened very slowly) when the switch is placed in the “off” position, thereby rendering the switch partially or fully inoperative.
Various solutions to the problem of wetting of housing surfaces by a gallium alloy have been proposed in the prior art. U.S. Pat. No. 5,704,958 to Lauvray et al. prescribes treating glass with a silyling agent such as trimethylchlorosilane to alter Si—OH bonds at the glass surface and thereby render them inactive towards gallium and its alloys. U.S. Pat. No. 5,391,846 to Taylor et al. teaches that wetting can be reduced or eliminated by coating the housing surfaces with a layer of a fluoropolymer material. U.S. Pat. No. 5,792,236, also to Taylor et al., attributes wetting of housing surfaces to oxidation of the gallium alloy, and suggests pretreating the gallium alloy or its constituents to remove oxides prior to introducing the gallium alloy into the housing.
The foregoing and other techniques, while purportedly successful at reducing or eliminating wetting of housing surfaces, may not be suitable for use with conventional encapsulated switch manufacturing techniques. For example, a common switch manufacturing process involves heating a glass housing to its softening point to seal the housing to the electrode assembly. This could cause melting or decomposition of certain coatings used in the prior art to reduce wetting, such as the fluoropolymer material proposed in the aforementioned U.S. Pat. No. 5,391,846 to Taylor et al. Others of the techniques advanced in the prior art may not be appropriate for use with different housing materials (polymers, glasses, ceramics or metals), or may render the manufacturing process significantly more complex and costly.